Returning to Tahiti in the fall of 1895, Paul Gauguin was soon beset by physical ailments and financial difficulties. Despite this, in 1896–97 he painted a group of impressive canvases in a larger format than his usual works. He based Why Are You Angry? on an earlier Tahitian composition but changed the mood of the painting: here the principal figures are larger and disengaged from one another, their postures and characters more difficult to interpret. The interrogative title encourages the viewer to seek some sort of narrative, but the imagery resists a definitive reading.